Jack Canon's American Destiny

Broken Pieces

Thursday, June 26, 2014

There’s been a great deal of talk lately about my writing style, and the way that I’ve chosen to narrate my novel, Flash Bang. Some readers have stated that my grasp of grammar and the basic structures of dialogue are questionable.

I would like to take this opportunity to address those complaints. Flash Bang is a novel about an ex-US Army infantryman/CID agent-turned-bounty-hunter who is called on to solve a murder. The narrative style that I employ in the text is purely of my own creation and is intended to draw the reader into the main character’s thoughts and into his visceral reactions to the situations he’s in and the things he is experiencing. When I started working on this project I made the conscious decision to forgo some of the more basic writing structures and grammatical rules in order to free up the flow of my narrative.

During times of stress or anger sentences sometimes shorten to only words at a time. The subject often falls from the beginning of the sentence, leaving only the verb and some nouns. Let me assure you that this is intentional. From my personal experience as a full time thief fighter and Army Basic Combat Training recruit, the interior monologue of an individual who is in the process of being beaten, shot at or who is simply angry enough to kill someone is severely different from that of someone who is ordering a cup of coffee or buttering some bread. My narrative in those instances is intended to illicit visceral responses in the reader similar to those that Parks is experiencing. During fights the world comes to Parks in flashes and still frames, the way they do in real life. He hears and feels things in a 360-degree onslaught that often causes sentences to run into one another as he himself begins to go into sensory overload.

Another decision I made from the start of the project was to present the dialogue in a different format than usual; my reason being that I really wanted the reader to feel as though Parks was telling them the story, speaking freely about the events the way he would tell a friend. My use of the words “say” and “says” as dialogue cues was a means of accomplishing that. I feel that it creates a more fluid dialogue between the characters and really draws out the subtext of what is being said.

Finally, my use of foul language throughout the course of the novel has been criticized. Flash Bang is a novel narrated by a military veteran living in a nightmare world of violence and self-loathing. There’s going to be some cursing. Honestly, the fact that it is the language, and not the shooting, beating, stabbing or killing that is the most offensive thing about my work for some readers, says something about the world we live in. I didn’t see that coming.

Any uneducated dialogue or foul language is the product of many, many interviews and my own personal experiences in both military and civilian law enforcement. Like it or not, this is the way many or most of your warriors talk; not all, but certainly my characters. And if bad language is a deal breaker for you, then you are not my target audience. There’s nothing wrong with that. There are plenty of authors who do not use those words. Those words are mine and I chose to use them to realistically depict the thoughts, feelings and interactions of a haunted man who’s really good at catching bad guys and doesn’t like what it does to him.

In closing, I hope this has cleared up some of the controversy and helped to draw those who might be interested in reading my work toward it, and those who are not, toward more suitable material for them.

Respectfully yours,

Kellen Burden

Sebastian Parks is drowning in a flood of his own creation. Dishonorably discharged from the Army, he’s wracked with night terrors and an anger that he can’t abate. Unemployable and uninterested in anything resembling a normal job, Parks makes his living in fugitive apprehension, finding wanted felons on Facebook and thumping them into custody with his ex-military buddies John Harkin and Eric “Etch” Echevarria. When the body of a teenage Muslim boy is found in front of a downtown Denver nightclub Parks, Harkin and Etch are called on to do what they do best: Find bad men and make them pay.

Saturday, June 21, 2014

The new house felt like The Chronicles of Narnia, with its walk-in closets and hiding spaces. I even pretended that by pushing through the coats in the deep closet, I would be able to enter a new land of magic. But my fingers touched the wall every time.

There were three floors, plus a basement full of nooks and crannies. We had a backyard, and then what we called the “way back.” Even the “way back” had a “way back” because the fence was broken down, and we could run for a distance in a wooded area before seeing the backs of neighboring houses. There was the loft above the garage, with a ladder in the shed to climb up. And there were the cubby holes cut out of the flimsy plywood walls in the attic—the cut-out sections matching the wall perfectly, and held in place by a couple of nails. There were closets upon closets (oh, how one misses that living in France), and there were even large drawers in the hallway where we used to keep our dirty clothes to be washed, and sometimes stow away in when playing hide-and-seek.

Since the house was somewhat run-down, we renovated the rooms in a joint family effort, thoroughly gutting and re-doing one room each summer. My father and brother pounded the plaster until it fell off the lath board onto the floor. Then we all scooped it up with snow shovels, put it in boxes and carried it outside to be picked up by the garbage truck. My father redid the wiring behind the walls, and worked alongside my brother as they nailed up fresh sheetrock, applied joint compound, then sanded and painted the room.

My mother stood outside in the sun with the baseboard and window trim balanced on two sawhorses. She burned the paint with a small electric grill, and scraped it off the wood—the old, cracked paint now bubbling and pliable. Then she sanded and painted everything so that the trim was smooth and white. When everything was in place—the trim, the freshly painted walls, the new outlets—the room became a blank canvas, ready to tell the story of our family with all the things we put in it. In this way, we conquered the house, one room at a time, and put our stamp on it.

We went to “the Farm” each week, which was forty-five minutes away. There we borrowed land from a friend so we could grow vegetables and freeze them for the winter. Jeff threw green beans at Mark to tease him while we were picking and weeding until my father yelled, “Knock it off!” and we all suppressed our giggles. When the four of us were released from our duties, we ran through the tall grass, coming out of it with our pants wet from the spit bugs.

“He’s around the bend!” I yelled to Jeff as I dodged Mark’s grasping hands in our game of chase around the house—little kids against the big kids. “Stephanie’s around the corner!” my brother yelled back, laughing. These were the names we made up for specific areas of our house so that we could warn each other of where we might get caught.

Stephanie and I played dolls and pretended our bed was a boat, a safe haven from the waters surrounding it. Jeff and Mark experimented with the tape-recorder, recording funny voices and loud burps and their own laughter. The four of us played together, swinging around the six white columns on the front porch, and building lean-tos in the back with the extra planks of wood lying around. And in the winter, we all went outside after school to the “way back,” which was set on a hill. There we navigated our sleds around the trees, laughing gleefully as we zipped over the snowy moguls before skidding into a halt against the fence at the bottom.

We stayed there until it was dark, sometimes lying quietly on our sleds, looking upwards at the black branches set against the purple sky, feeling the snowflakes settle softly on our faces. Eventually it started to get too quiet, too cold and dark, and we deposited our sleds in the shed next to the garage and traipsed towards the house, my mother’s face framed by the light of the kitchen window as she prepared dinner.

At the symphony, the tuning ‘A’ caught my attention every time as the discordant sounds of all the instruments playing independently fell obediently in tune with the principal violinist. We were at the concert hall often, sometimes as much as once a week, and the space felt like a second home. When Jeff won a local competition at the age of sixteen, to appear as a guest pianist alongside my father’s symphony, I sat, breathless in excitement and anxiety, as he played Rachmaninoff’s “Third Piano Concerto.” He looked so small as he walked across the stage, but he confidently flipped the back of his suit jacket before sitting on the bench, after which he rattled the difficult piece off flawlessly.

I always felt privileged as we wound our way down the box seats after the symphony concert had concluded, taking the back stairwell with everyone else, but turning to the private door that accessed the backstage. There my father joked with the other brass players light-heartedly, showing us a side of him we rarely saw at home. Everyone called each other by their nicknames: Stevie, Brucie, Johnny, Dougie, Petey… Do you think classical musicians are serious? They are not—at least not the brass.

At seventeen, Jennie Goutet has a dream that she will one day marry a French man and sets off to Avignon in search of him. Though her dream eludes her, she lives boldly—teaching in Asia, studying in Paris, working and traveling for an advertising firm in New York.

When God calls her, she answers reluctantly, and must first come to grips with depression, crippling loss, and addiction before being restored. Serendipity takes her by the hand as she marries her French husband, works with him in a humanitarian effort in East Africa, before settling down in France and building a family.

Told with honesty and strength, A Lady in France is a brave, heart- stopping story of love, grief, faith, depression, sunshine piercing the gray clouds—and hope that stays in your heart long after it’s finished.

Friday, June 20, 2014

And then I heard a knock on the door. It started quietly, but turned to a desperate banging that had the same beat as BJ’s ringtone which suddenly started blaring from the depths of the sheets on my bed. I hauled my beat-up body away from the commode, and noticed my head was pounding to the same rhythm, too. That almost set me back to throwing up, but I couldn’t ignore the door or the ringing. They were too loud. Crossing the bathroom, I realized I had no panties under my sequined skirt, and then wobbled across my bedroom. At least the stranger’s snoring had stopped. He sat up in the bed, rubbing at his head, looking almost as hung over as I was.

The walk of shame came to an end and I opened the door, interrupting my brother BJ mid-knock. His face was almost purple with rage, and he stared angrily at his lit up cell phone as mine continued to ring. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “Hi, Beej. Come on in. I’ll be right with you.”

I ran back to the bathroom and closed the door behind me. I didn’t have to throw up again, I just needed a minute to hide. To think about how to calm him down. Through the cracked wood, I heard a crash, and a man’s grunt. “Ow, stop.”

“Asshole! Get the hell out of my sister’s bed. And put some pants on.” I heard a thump.

Fuck! Okay, I’m leaving! I didn’t know she was anybody’s sister.”

In less than a minute, the voices stopped, the door slammed, and it was time to face BJ. I took a deep breath, and then opened the door into my bedroom. This really wasn’t going to go well.

At first, I didn’t see BJ, and I scanned the small apartment nervously.

Maybe I dreamed it?

Suddenly my head jerked from a hard slap across the face, and I was grateful that it was a slap and not a full punch. Still, it stung, and tears filled my eyes almost immediately. I blinked them back and tried to focus on my brother.

His face was still purple. I’d seen this look many times, and my stomach sank dangerously. I was aware of the distance between us and the toilet, and I took a step back. BJ followed.

“What did I tell you, Louise? What were you not supposed to do last night?”

I hung my head in shame and mumbled, “I was supposed to stay in. I’m sorry. I just thought…”

Millions died when the zombie plague swept the country. For the survivors, the journey has just begun. Jenna, Sam, and Lola are still alive. Jenna avoids human contact, traveling East Coast backroads with her boyfriend, a dog named Chicken, and a Louisville Slugger. Sam escapes to the mountains, where he’s conscripted into a zombie-slaying militia sent on nightly raids to kill the undead…and innocent civilians. Lola’s imprisoned in the “safety” of a zombie-free New Orleans hotel, but life grows more dangerous when her brother gets bitten by a zombie. Jenna arrives in the French Quarter, lured by the false promises of New Orleans’ drunken leader. There, she’s ripped away from her boyfriend, drugged, and dumped in a death camp after refusing Franklin’s sexual advances. Jenna and Lola’s lives collide there, where the dead live and the dying are victims of gruesome medical experiments. Escape isn’t easy: release the genetically-enhanced zombies from the lab to create a diversion, slip away, and don’t get eaten. When Sam arrives, will he join the right side of the battle?

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

The basic starting point should be that your book is good. You believe this to be true and that is why it has been published. Now ‘the only thing’ you have to do is to find your readers who will spread the news of the wonderful book you have written by word of mouth. How can you achieve this?

1. Use social media and be yourself. Write down your opinion on things, post excerpts from your work, show people what you’re like. The power of one’s personality is becoming increasingly important, so make sure your showing your true self and not some ‘invented character,’ because sooner or later, deception will be exposed.

2. Meet your future readers. Meet them at book clubs, schools, libraries, and take part in the organization of these meetings. Don’t try to sell books, don’t read from your book, but instead, talk to the people who came, show yourself, talk about your novel, but don’t try and pitch it, because that is ‘literally’ not your job. Your task is to show yourself, to ‘sell yourself.’ Get people interested in you and your work. Appear at all meetings possible.

3. Be on good terms with bloggers and journalists. Don’t get offended if they are critical of your work. Don’t be concerned with this at all. Don’t react to negative criticism, don’t defend yourself, don’t retaliate, because it will only make things worse. Accept the fact that not everyone has the same taste, and so your book can’t please everyone either. There’s nothing wrong with that. But you must know that if you argue with bloggers, critics, or commenters, your will NEVER come out on top. It’s much most elegant if you just go on with your work, and if someone asks for an interview or a guest post, be accommodating.

4. Create your own web page if you haven’t already. Post excerpts from your works and host lots of games where people have the chance to win a copy of your book. Free books can spread knowledge about you, so be generous.

5. Only very few people are able to achieve a breakthrough from one moment to the next. Usually outsiders forget that even these authors have many, many years of work behind their seemingly fast, or ‘instant’ success. So don’t be impatient. Write, write, write, and build slowly, but surely. If your works are good, sooner or later you will be discovered, but make sure you do all you can to get yourself noticed, and follow the advice I mentioned above.

Bangkok: a sizzling, all-embracing, exotic city where the past and the present intertwine. It’s a place where anything can happen… and anything really does happen. The paths of seven people cross in this metropolis. Seven seekers, for whom this city might be a final destination. Or perhaps it is only the start of a new journey? A successful businessman; a celebrated supermodel; a man who is forever the outsider; a young mother who suddenly loses everything; a talented surgeon, who could not give the woman he loved all that she desired; a brothel’s madam; and a charming young woman adopted at birth. Why these seven? Why did they come to Bangkok now, at the same time? Do chance encounters truly exist?

Bangkok Transit is a Central European best-seller. The author, Eva Fejos, a Hungarian writer and journalist, is a regular contributor to women’s magazines and is often herself a featured personality. Bangkok Transit was her first best-seller, which sold more than 100,000 copies and is still selling. Following the initial publication of this novel in 2008, she went on to write twelve other best-sellers, thus becoming a publishing phenomena in Hungary According to accounts given by her readers, the author’s books are “therapeutic journeys,” full of flesh and blood characters who never give up on their dreams. Many readers have been inspired to change the course of their own lives after reading her books. “Take your life into your own hands,” is one of the important messages the author wishes to convey.

Try it for yourself, and let Eva Fejos whisk you off on one of her whirlwind journeys… that might lead deep into your own heart.

About Eva Fejos, the author of Bangkok Transit

- Eva Fejos is a Hungarian writer and journalist.

She:

- has had 13 best-selling novels published in Hungary so far.

- Bangkok Transit is her first best-seller, published in 2008.

- has won several awards as a journalist, and thanks to one of her articles, the legislation pertaining to human egg donation was modified, allowing couples in need to acquire donor eggs more easily.

- spends her winters in Bangkok.

- likes novels that have several storylines running parallel.

- visited all the places she’s written about.

- spent a few days at an elephant orphanage in Thailand; and has investigated the process of how Thai children are put up for adoption while visiting several orphanages.

- founded her own publishing company in Hungary last year, where she not only publishes her own books, but foreign books too, hand-picked by her.

- Her books published in Hungary thus far are:

Till Death Do Us Part (Holtodiglan) | Bangkok Transit | Hotel Bali | Chicks (Csajok) | Strawberries for Breakfast (Eper reggelire) | The Mexican (A mexikói) | Cuba Libre | Dalma | Hello, London | Christmas in New York (Karácsony New Yorkban) | Caribbean Summer (Karibi nyár) | Bangkok, I Love You (Szeretlek, Bangkok) | Starting Now – the new edition ofTill Death Do Us Part (Most kezdődik) | Vacation in Naples – the English version will be published in summer, 2014 (Nápolyi vakáció)

To be published in spring of 2014: I Waited One Hundred Nights (Száz éjjel vártam)

Friday, June 13, 2014

“Interesting, ain’t it?” hisses in his ear. His heart leaps into his throat. If not for the fact that his throat closed upon itself, he would certainly have screamed. Whirling around, he comes face-to-face with the girl of his dream, or rather her living model, the common room serving girl. His breath is coming in snatches and he stammers as he tries to explain. Nothing comes out of him except inane yammering. She is so close he can smell the natural womanly perfume of her hair.

“It’s okay, you know”, she whispers. “No need to explain or be embarrassed. I done it myself before. Missus has a man from time to time.” She smiles and holds on to Justin’s nightshirt as she squints past him and into the room. “Ooh, but not like this one.” She half suppresses a giggle.

Justin tries to squeeze past her, only to have her hold on to the front of his shirt, and turn him, so he now is backing away. “My, my, you are the nervous one, ain’t ya? Never been with a woman, I’m guessin’. That’s fine though. You mighty good lookin’ to get away for so long without some woman hookin’ ya.” With her other hand she reaches up to her throat and pulls a drawstring holding her night dress together. It falls open in a sharp V between her breasts. He raises his finger to his lips in a shushing manner and moves further away from the door, pulling the girl along with him. He backs up until he is across the room and encounters a table with his rear end. The nightdress continues a slow slide from his companion’s shoulders to expose one pink-nippled breast. Smiling the girl uses her free hand to tweak her nipple causing it to dimple and expand. Justin is enthralled. Despite being caught spying, and now within earshot of the couple in the next room, he is beside himself with desire. Everything he has been through tonight has done nothing if not enflame him sexually. He makes a sudden decision to have this girl, no matter the consequences. Have her now, and right here.

With a look of feminine understanding, red lips part and brown eyes assume a wily, lascivious glint. She maneuvers around him to the table, deftly raises her nightdress above her hips and positions a firm bottom on the table edge. Impatiently she whispers, “Well then? It ain’t goin’ to do the job without a bit of help.” When Justin just stares at her exposed charms, she grasps the drawstring of his underpants, tugs them loose and allows them to fall to the floor. Now fully erect and exposed, she admires the swollen penis pointed directly between her legs. “Good Lord, boy. The women that passed you by surely didn’t know what they missed,” she whispers with a giggle.

When Justin Thorne, coddled student and heir apparent to Sylvan Springs Plantation, is forced to find his heritage, his manhood, and his destiny, in the space of one brief spring, all hell breaks loose on the banks of the Ohio River. His Virginia of 1836 is a time of transition and enormous growth. Northern industrial might and southern aristocracy, abolitionist movements and slave cultures, collide in turmoil and lay bare the raw needs and desires of those intrepid spirits confronting the frontiers of the antebellum South.

Coming of age is an expected result of time and circumstance. It happens to all who live so long, but to each within the dictates of their own lives. The process is on-going and ever dynamic. Every person is a precious product resulting from the effects of nature and nurture. One’s ancestry, culture, and environment collude in myriad ways to make us; all as different as each life’s story, and as singular as snowflakes. This theme is played out over-and-over throughout the world and throughout history, in millions of places like Holderby’s Landing; as similar and as different as each human is to the other.

Holderby’s Landing is a single glimpse in time at the coming of age of a land, a community, and a few determined souls thrown together in love, strife and chance. What they make of the time, the opportunities and themselves is the story told and the living breath of this book.

Thursday, June 12, 2014

By the time July rolled around, Phillip was beginning to sweat and it had nothing to do with the summer heat. He walked into the lobby of Athena Biosciences located in what was commonly referred to as the “Innovation Cluster” near Kendall Square in Cambridge because of the number of biotech, pharmaceutical and high-tech startups that occupied the area. As he took the elevator to the executive floor, he reflected on his current circumstances. When he showed up at Nina’s office a month ago, he thought his consulting offer and dinner invitation would have been enough to win her over, but he miscalculated her resolve, or maybe her hatred of him was more intense than he realized. Not even sending compromising photos of her with another man made a difference.

His backers were putting pressure on him to take care of any potential scandal lurking in the shadows that could derail the project. He had taken care of Tracey and he was confident she would keep quiet. He was shelling out enough cash every month to make sure she did. Theresa was a senior executive at a major cosmetics company in New York and was quite happy having as little contact with him as possible. Only Nina was left; his beautiful, infuriating, fiercely independent Nina. He thought getting sentimental was for fools but he had to admit it was great seeing her again. The strange thing was, he found he liked spending time with her. He was behaving like some lovesick teenager who kept finding reasons to see her. But make no mistake about it, he would break her if it became apparent she posed an imminent threat to his goals. He did it once and he could do it again. Only this time, it might get messier. He had to consider her husband. From what his investigator told him, Marc Kasai adored Nina and would battle to the death anyone who tried to hurt her. Plus, he had to tread carefully because Nina’s father-in-law could become a valuable ally.

Ben Obasanjo had been a friend of Phillip’s for almost thirty years. He was CEO of Athena, the first African-American to helm the company. He was responsible for turning the company around financially, and Athena now earned over $1 billion in profits annually, a record achievement for a firm its size.

“So you’re really going to do this?” Ben asked, as he sat across from Phillip in his richly decorated office.

“I don’t see why not. I have people crunching the data as we speak. I expect good news to come out of that.”

“You know you can count on me.”

“Yes. I need you to mobilize your contacts, potential high net worth donors who might see things our way and actually have the influence to get us where we want to go.”

“Consider it done. What about that problem we discussed last week? Any closer to a resolution?”

“Nina is a little bit more stubborn than I anticipated, but nothing I can’t fix. She won’t be a problem.”

“You better be sure, brethren, otherwise you could be finished even before we get this project off the ground.”

Phillip knew Ben was right, he wasn’t telling him anything he hadn’t mulled around in his own mind a million times. He had confided in Ben about his recent challenges in getting Nina to see things through his lens.

“I introduced her to Geraldine.”

Ben looked at Phillip curiously. “How did that go?”

“They like each other.”

Ben slammed his palm against the desk with enthusiasm and a big grin. “There you go. It looks like things are working out, so what are you so worried about?”

“She has to be handled carefully and deliberately.”

Ben nodded in agreement. “Makes sense. There’s a lot of history there.”

“Not just that. Her father-in-law might be very useful to us.”

“Oh, yes. Doctor Paul Kasai. Good man. I’ve met him on a couple of occasions.”

“Let’s hope he’s good enough to throw his support to the project.”

Ben got suddenly serious. “We’ve known each other a long time, Phillip, and I believe you’re a good man.”

“Where are you going with this?”

Ben reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a key. He opened the top desk drawer and removed a small manila envelope, the type with the bubble wrap inside.

“When you told me about your plans, I remembered something I had in my possession. I should have gotten rid of it years ago, but I didn’t, and as time went by, I forgot about it.”

“What is it?”

Phillip knew Ben well enough to know he didn’t fool around. Whatever this was, it was major. He could see tiny beads of sweat forming on Ben’s forehead.

Ben handed Phillip the envelope. “I think after you hear this, you’ll know what to do.”

“Hear?”

“It’s not my place to pass judgment and I’ll always be an ally. But you shouldn’t have done it. Let’s leave it at that.”

Boston executive Nina Kasai has been living a lie since her days as a student at Stanford University. But she’s about to learn that some secrets are too big to stay buried.

Years ago, Nina fled from her life of wealth and privilege and vowed never to look back. The horrifying truth has been locked away in her hidden diary, and in the mind of a disturbed woman who will never tell, ever. However, the perfect life she’s since created is about to come crashing down when Phillip Copeland –a ghost from her past with political ambition and secrets of his own, makes Nina an offer she can’t refuse: her silence in exchange for his.

Soon, it all goes horribly wrong when a shocking double-cross sends Nina reeling, and devastating loss threatens to push her over the edge. To make matters worse, her diary, the only link to her secret past has been stolen.

To reclaim her life and bring this twisted game to its stunning conclusion, Nina must confront the past she’s been running from, and find the courage to make a life-altering decision that leaves multiple casualties in its wake.

“Don’t worry about it. We’re cooped up together—not surprised things can get heated.”

She smiled and gave a small nod. Nikki tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear and leaned closer.

Heated. Sure as hell the wrong choice of words.

His gaze travelled her gorgeous form. She was dressed in her same outfit of barely-there sleepwear—a pale green spaghetti-strapped tank and matching shorts that stopped at her ass. Smelt good, too. Something clean and floral.

Damn, she had great legs…arms, neck, everything.

Nikki moved closer, her thigh touching his. She put her hand on his leg. The warmth of her touch sank into the jeans.

Their lips met on a mutual groan and he yanked her onto his lap, deepening their kiss. Nikki straddled him, her thinly covered sex hitting him with enough impact he was rock hard in less than a second.

She pushed her hands up under his shirt at the same time he spread his palms beneath her tank across the soft skin of her back.

He needed her bare. Now.

She rocked in his lap, her tongue mingling, dancing and duelling with his.

His abs quivered under her seeking fingers and Pete’s heart hit overdrive. He kissed her harder, pressing her into his chest until her hands had no room to roam and her breasts were flat.

Nikki moaned and kept his pace, slanting her mouth against his again and again.

A voice popped up in his head to stop, reminding him this wasn’t right, but there was no saying no.

She was passion and heat, and he needed her.

“Pete,” Nikki breathed against his mouth.

He stopped kissing her though his body screamed a protest, and pulled back to meet her eyes. Heavy-lidded and almost black, he read desire as strong as his. Pete’s cock throbbed.

They panted against each other.

“Darlin’? Did I hurt you?”

She shook her head. “I want to go to your room. Now.”

Crossing Forces series:

Small Town Texas doesn’t always mean small time crime.Welcome to Antioch, population fifty thousand.With a police department full of detectives and officers who are good at what they do, throw in the occasional FBI agent, and the bad guy doesn’t have a shot, no matter how big the crime.

They work together and fight together. Relationships will be forged and changed along the twists and turns.

When fate intervenes, love and happiness can be found in unlikely places.

Crossing Forces by C.A. Szarek

This is book two in the Crossing Forces series

Vowing to protect her had nothing to do with feelings.

Detective Pete Crane catches a new shooting case and considers it business-as-usual. But when the lead witness is the Chief of Police’s fiery assistant, he never anticipated she’d challenge him—personally and professionally. Especially while under his protection.

Little do they know, the shooting she and her grandmother witnessed was anything but random.

Thrown together, their attraction sizzles, even though she’s squarely in the no-fly zone. She makes him break every rule in his little black book.

Nikki Harper has been attracted to Pete since they met two years ago. Witnessing a brutal shooting throws her into a stigma that’s always been her greatest fear—a victim. She has no choice but to accept his protective custody and let him help save her and her beloved grandmother.

Can Pete protect his witness and solve the case, while fighting the intense heat with Nikki?

In the midst of this process, he heard the water start in the shower but didn’t alter the pace of undressing. When all was in order, he went into the bathroom and opened the shower door. He stood there, immobile except for a growing erection, admiring her beautiful body. Cleo was a few inches shorter than Paul, neither thin nor fat, with a firm body; beautiful, firm breasts with erect nipples; a thin waist; and smooth skin that had a slightly tan color from her one-quarter Hawaiian heritage. Her face remained exotically beautiful after all of its makeup was washed away, with just a hint of Asia in her eyelids, and she had black hair that was stylishly cut short.

Her pubic hair was also black and appeared to be standing guard over the delights below, like the eunuch guarding the sultan’s harem.

Finally, in mock anger, Cleo said, “OK, Boss, either come in or leave, but close the door. You’re getting water all over the floor.”

Paul laughed and complied. They put wet, soapy arms around each other and washed backs while their fronts were in contact. (pp 181-182) Malpractice! the Novel

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

I do. All the time. Perhaps it’s because I write fantasy. Maybe it’s because I also read a lot of fantasy and I appreciate a heroine who is powerful not because she’s magical but rather because she’s real.

Lusielle, the heroine in my latest novel, The Curse Giver, from Twilight Times Books, turned out to be a remarkably “real” fantasy heroine. In hindsight, I liked her a lot and I wanted to learn more from the character I created. I wondered what made her so compelling.

But first, let me tell you a little bit about Lusielle. In the novel, she’s a powerful healer, on the run, accused of a crime she didn’t commit. She’s about to be burned for her crimes when the Lord of Laonia saves her from the pyre. He’s not her savior. On the contrary, he’s deadly to her. A mysterious curse giver has cast a virulent curse that can’t be defused or defeated. The curse requires the Lord of Laonia to murder Lusielle in order to save his people from destruction. So this is how the story begins, with Lusielle wondering if she should help the bitter lord pledged to kill her and the Lord of Laonia set to kill the only woman who can heal more than his body—his soul.

One of the reasons Lusielle comes across so real in the story is that her passion for her occupation is very tangible. Practicing her craft lends her authority and, perhaps more importantly, many opportunities to grow and learn throughout the story. She takes her trade very seriously and so did I. All of the healing practices and ingredients that Lusielle uses in The Curse Giver are based on authentic medieval practices. Most of her potions’ components come from historical sources. I think that the concrete elements of her practice make her more real to the reader, more credible and therefore more compelling.

Another important aspect to Lusielle’s realism is that she’s not perfect and she knows it. She works hard but things don’t always go her way. She’s made mistakes—a marriage without love that led to years of abuse and slavery, years that, by her own admission, she won’t get back. And yet she’s also resilient, capable of looking forward, able to dream a different life and willing to pursue it even when it entails breaking the rules and loving someone who is ultimately pledged to kill her.

Along those lines, relationships bring a solid sense of reality to Lusielle’s story. Friendship is very important to her, and her often confusing feelings for the Lord of Laonia reflect the full gamut of the human emotions that are so familiar to all of us.

But I think that the elements that make Lusielle most real are her willingness to challenge her fears, her ability to learn from her experiences, and the confidence that she develops as she learns. Courage and learning go hand in hand. Sure, there’s some powerful magic in the story, but ultimately it’s Lusielle’s knowledge, reason and awareness that make all the difference. See, I think heroines who learn, change and adapt throughout a story are not just cool, they’re also real, because all of us have to grow and evolve to better our lives and we thrive only when we learn from our mistakes.

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Dora Machado is the award-winning author of the epic fantasy Stonewiser series and her newest novel, The Curse Giver, available from Twilight Times Books. She grew up in the Dominican Republic, where she developed a fascination for writing and a taste for Merengue. After a lifetime of straddling such compelling but different worlds, fantasy is a natural fit to her stories. She lives in Florida with her husband and three very opinionated cats.

Lusielle's bleak but orderly life as a remedy mixer is shattered when she is sentenced to die for a crime she didn't commit. She's on the pyre, about to be burned, when a stranger breaks through the crowd and rescues her from the flames. Brennus, Lord of Laonia is the last of his line. He is caught in the grip of a mysterious curse that has murdered his kin, doomed his people and embittered his life. To defeat the curse, he must hunt a birthmark and kill the woman who bears it in the foulest of ways. Lusielle bears such a mark. Stalked by intrigue and confounded by the forbidden passion flaring between them, predator and prey must come together to defeat not only the vile curse, but also the curse giver who has already conjured their demise.

Award-Winning Finalist in the fantasy category of The 2013 USA Best Book Awards, sponsored by USA Book News

Silvia is standing at the hall doorway, twirling her crimped black locks and eying me up and down. She does that a lot. It’s unnerving.

“Daddy sending you on another mission?”

“Yeah. Wanna take this one?” I offer the papers and envelope as I head toward her.

She laughs, but it’s also unnerving. Everything about her is unsettling, ever since we were kids.

She pops her gum. “Afraid not.”

I push past her into the foyer, passing underneath one of the two massive white staircases, and head toward a set of exit doors.

“Dimitri?”

I glance back. She has her head tilted, still running her eyes up and down like she’s grooming me in her head. She probably is.

She smiles. “Don’t waste my inheritance, okay?”

I scoff, repressing the shudder, then let myself out. I expect Silvia to follow, but she remains inside where she belongs.

A white Honda Civic is waiting in the carport, engine idling. Low key. That’s how I roll.

I slide in, drop the file into the passenger seat, and pull out to head toward Phoenix.

Her inheritance. That’s what Silvia calls me.

If Karl thinks of me as his guard dog, then Silvia considers me her puppy.

And she’s just itching to get her hands on me.

Twenty-three year old Dimitri has to do what he is told—literally. Controlled by a paranormal bond, he is forced to use his wits to fulfill unlimited deadly wishes made by multimillionaire Karl Walker.

Dimitri has no idea how his family line became trapped in the genie bond. He just knows resisting has never ended well. When he meets Syd—assertive, sexy, intelligent Syd—he becomes determined to make her his own. Except Karl has ensured Dimitri can’t tell anyone about the bond, and Syd isn’t the type to tolerate secrets.

Then Karl starts sending him away on back-to-back wishes. Unable to balance love and lies, Dimitri sets out to uncover Karl’s ultimate plan and put it to an end. But doing so forces him to confront the one wish he never saw coming—the wish that will destroy him.

Rainy Kaye is an aspiring overlord. In the mean time, she blogs at <a href=http://www.rainyofthedark.com>RainyoftheDark.com</a> and writes paranormal novels from her lair somewhere in Phoenix, Arizona. When not plotting world domination, she enjoys getting lost around the globe, studying music so she can sing along with symphonic metal bands, and becoming distracted by Twitter (<a href=http://www.twitter.com/rainyofthedark>@rainyofthedark</a>).She is represented by Rossano Trentin of TZLA.